The Heartland Poker Tour main event is Saturday at Soaring Eagle in Mount Pleasant and I'll be there.

Not again.

Those were the exact two words running through my head Saturday night as I shoved the rest of my chips in during a Heartland Poker Tour main event satellite at Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant.

Last year, I finished as the bubble boy in a qualifier, busting out in 13th as the other 12 players advanced to the $1,650 buy-in main event.

With 17 out of the original 81 players left Saturday -- and 16 advancing to this weekend's main event -- I was 17th overall in chips.

All eyes were on my dwindling stack. But then a funny thing happened. I got lucky.

Here's the hand:

With blinds at 2,000/4,000 with a 400 ante, I was down to 5,500 total and in the big blind.

The player under the gun called, as did the player who had the tournament's biggest stack (more than 200,000 in chips).

I put my remaining stack in blind from the big blind and the two other players called.

The board ran A-2-2-10-5 as the two other players checked it down, hoping to knock me out.

Both players flipped over their hands after the river. They each had nothing more than high card.

I hadn't looked yet.

First card I turned over was the seven of hearts. The other was the five of diamonds. I had rivered a pair and almost quadrupled up with the win.

The table's second shortest stack admitted after the hand he had folded A-K.

The blinds jumped to 3,000/6,000 with a 500 ante shortly after that hand. Thankfully, they never made it around to me again.

A player -- not the one who folded A-K on my big hand -- moved all in from under the gun for about 20,000 and was called by the two biggest stacks at the table.

One of callers flopped a straight holding J-10, besting the all-in player's A-K and the bubble had burst.

I was so exhausted and relieved after the final hand I really couldn't even celebrate. If anything, I was just still surprised I survived my all-in hand.

What a grind, and hopefully there's plenty more to go.

Now it's on to the HPT main event at 5 p.m. Saturday at Soaring Eagle. Last year, there were 301 players and a first-place prize of $130,178.

I'll have more later this week on my satellite experiences in Mount Pleasant over the weekend.

I also plan to post updates on my tournament progress Saturday on my Twitter account and here, so feel free to follow along.